Researchers Submit Patent Application, “Selectively Redeemable Telehealth Services”, for Approval (USPTO 20230097995): Mdsave Shared Services Inc.

2023 APR 19 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- From Washington, D.C., NewsRx journalists report that a patent application by the inventors Ketchel, III, Paul J. (Brentwood, TN, US), filed on November 10, 2022, was made available online on March 30, 2023.

The patent’s assignee is Mdsave Shared Services Inc. (Brentwood, Tennessee, United States).

News editors obtained the following quote from the background information supplied by the inventors: “Medical services are services provided to a medical patient. Some medical services may help improve or maintain a patient’s health, based on disease prevention, diagnosis, or treatment. The practice of medicine encompasses medical procedures performed for a patient, which may include both preventive care and treatment. Medical service providers include doctors, hospitals, and health insurers. A provider may offer medical services to patients by provisioning medical resources such as, for example, laboratory, imaging, treatment, or surgical facilities, to provide the services. Some medical services may require specially trained or licensed medical professionals. For example, a medical practice providing diagnosis and treatment for joint pain may provide medical services through the work of an orthopedic specialist. In some scenarios, patient access to a specialized professional or facility may be limited by cost, or availability. Some specialized medical professionals and related facilities may be scarce.

“A medical practice may also limit the medical procedures offered to patients based on the availability of specialized professionals and facilities at a given time or location as increasingly seen with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, the services offered to a patient may be determined based on allocating surgeons to various surgical facility locations at specific times. Services supplied to patients may be limited to the allocated medical professionals and facilities, even when medical service demand exceeds supply at a given location or time. A medical practice providing many types of medical services may expend significant resources adapting the offered services to demand as cost and demand change. Some medical practices may fail to capture potential revenue lost when resources to provide medical services are underutilized relative to medical service demand.

“The price of healthcare services varies depending on specialty, procedure, and physician practice. In the United States, many patients do not have access to a simple way to shop and compare the price of common medical procedures. Due to the current managed care-based payor system in the US, the cost of treatment is often determined by managed care organizations.

“These managed care organizations have specific formularies for drugs and procedures designed specifically to patients’ individual health plans, which restrict the drugs and procedures available to patients in their plans. Patients have historically had no access to these price lists or formularies and have had very few tools to assist them in finding and comparing health care services or predetermining the cost of a procedure. Currently prospective patients who chose to compare medical costs are forced to conduct extensive, often inefficient, and time-consuming research to compare medical procedures prior to treatment.

“The rising cost of healthcare is having a dramatic effect on the U.S. healthcare system. Healthcare costs continue to outpace pace inflationary growth, provider reimbursement rates continue to fall, and the cost of patient insurance premiums are increasing. To lower monthly premium costs, many patients are choosing to purchase (and employers are choosing to offer) high deductible health plans as an alternative to traditional higher premium PPO health plans.

“These high deductible plans require patients to pay cash payments for medical services until the high deductible is satisfied, and once this deductible has been met, the insurance carrier begins to cover medical costs. As a result, many patients are seeing exponential increases in out-of-pocket expenses for medical procedures and services. In addition to more patients selecting high deductible plans, many patients cannot afford increased payments and are becoming uninsured or underinsured. As the number of patients who are uninsured, underinsured, or on high deductible plans grows, the need for a mechanism that allows patients to find discounted medical services increases and an efficient payment system.”

As a supplement to the background information on this patent application, NewsRx correspondents also obtained the inventors’ summary information for this patent application: “Herein presented is an apparatus and associated methods for presenting users a selection of at least one bundled set of healthcare services provided discretely and/or individually by a plurality of respective providers, determining a bundle price for the bundled set of healthcare services, receiving payment for the user selected bundled set, generating a purchase data record hereafter interchangeably referred to as a “voucher” or “voucher data record” selectively redeemable by the user to receive each of the bundled healthcare services in the bundled set, transmitting a unique confirmation number generated for the purchase data record to track the redemption status of the purchase data record, disbursing payment allocated from the received payment to the plurality of respective providers and updating the redemption status of the purchase data record as each of the plurality of services of the bundled set are redeemed. The bundle price may be based on the user’s health insurance deductible as well as the location and/or time at which the bundled set of services will be provided. The purchase data record may comprise an electronic health record.

“The above-described and other features and advantages realized through the techniques of the present disclosure will be better appreciated and understood with reference to the following detailed description, drawings, and appended claims. Additional features and advantages are realized through the techniques of the present invention. Other embodiments and aspects of the invention are described in detail herein and are considered a part of the claimed invention.

“The detailed description explains exemplary embodiments of the present invention, together with advantages and features, by way of example with reference to the drawings, in which similar numbers refer to similar parts throughout the drawings. The flow diagrams depicted herein are just examples. There may be many variations to these diagrams, or the steps (or operations) described therein without departing from the spirit of the invention. For instance, the steps may be performed in a differing order, or steps may be added, deleted, or modified. All these variations are considered to be within the scope of the claimed invention.

“Like reference symbols in the various drawings indicate like elements.”

The claims supplied by the inventors are:

“1-30. (canceled)

“31. A method comprising: receiving an electronic message comprising user selection of a plurality of healthcare services to be provided by a plurality of providers, wherein the selected plurality of services comprises at least one selectively redeemable healthcare service, using a processor; generating an electronic health record comprising a purchase data record identified by and with a unique confirmation number, using the processor; presetting an initial individual redemption status in the purchase data record for each selectively redeemable healthcare service of the selected plurality of healthcare services as unredeemed, using the processor; and providing a user access to the purchase data record to receive each selectively redeemable healthcare service of the selected plurality of healthcare services, using the processor.

“32. The method of claim 31, wherein the selected plurality of services comprises at least one healthcare service to be provided for a patient via an in-person visit with at least one provider of the plurality of providers.

“33. The method of claim 31, wherein the selected plurality of services comprises at least one healthcare service to be provided remotely.

“34. The method of claim 31, wherein the selected plurality of services comprises at least one healthcare service to be provided for a patient at a patient location remote from a provider location of at least one provider of the plurality of providers.

“35. The method of claim 31, wherein the selected plurality of services further comprises at least one healthcare service to be provided for a patient via a telehealth visit with at least one provider of the plurality of providers.

“36. The method of claim 35, wherein the telehealth visit further comprises at least one of: video, audio, a telephone call, text messaging, or chat messaging.

“37. The method of claim 35, wherein the telehealth visit further comprises a face-to-face video conversation with the at least one provider.

“38. The method of claim 35, wherein the telehealth visit further comprises a new prescription or a prescription refill recommended by the at least one provider.

“39. The method of claim 35, wherein the telehealth visit further comprises referral by the at least one provider for a lab test, imaging, or a specialist.

“40. The method of claim 35, wherein the telehealth visit further comprises urgent care.

“41. The method of claim 35, wherein the telehealth visit further comprises symptom assessment by the at least one provider.

“42. The method of claim 31, wherein the selected plurality of services further comprises providing at least one drug.

“43. The method of claim 31, wherein the selected plurality of services further comprises at least one lab test.

“44. The method of claim 31, wherein the selected plurality of services further comprises at least one imaging procedure.

“45. The method of claim 31, wherein the selected plurality of services further comprises at least one surgical procedure.

“46. The method of claim 31, wherein in response to receiving the electronic message comprising user selection of the plurality of services, the method further comprises: storing the electronic health record in a memory operably coupled with the processor, using the processor; and sending the electronic health record to at least one provider of the plurality of providers, using the processor.

“47. The method of claim 31, wherein the method further comprises sending the unique confirmation number to the user, using the processor.

“48. The method of claim 31, wherein the purchase data record is the electronic health record.

“49. The method of claim 31, wherein the purchase data record is selectively redeemable for each healthcare service individually, using the processor.

“50. The method of claim 31, wherein the purchase data record persists in a data store operably coupled with the processor and wherein the purchase data record is redeemable using the processor until each of the plurality of healthcare services in the selected plurality of services is redeemed.

“51. The method of claim 31, wherein the method further comprises receiving payment for the selected plurality of healthcare services, using the processor.

“52. The method of claim 51, wherein the selected plurality of healthcare services further comprises at least one healthcare service selectively redeemable for a predetermined period of time, using the processor.

“53. The method of claim 51, wherein the payment further comprises financing.

“54. The method of claim 51, wherein the method further comprises setting the individual redemption status in the purchase data record for each selectively redeemable healthcare service of the selected plurality of services as unredeemed, using the processor.

“55. The method of claim 51, wherein the method further comprises a payment price determined as a function of a location where the at least one selectively redeemable healthcare service of the selected plurality of healthcare services will be provided, using the processor.

“56. The method of claim 51, wherein the method further comprises disbursing a payment from the received payment to at least one of the plurality of providers, wherein the disbursed payment is less than the received payment, using the processor.

“57. The method of claim 56, wherein the at least one of the plurality of providers to whom payment is disbursed comprises at least one of a physician, a dentist, an orthodontist, a periodontist, an oral surgeon, a radiologist, an anesthesiologist, a dental hygienist, a physician assistant, a nurse, a therapist, a counselor, a psychologist, a social worker, a practice group, a hospital, a facility or an insurer.

“58. The method of claim 56, wherein the disbursed payment comprises a plurality of payments allocated among at least two providers of the plurality of providers, using the processor.

“59. The method of claim 31, wherein the method further comprises providing an application server using the processor wherein the application server is accessible to a plurality of client systems communicatively coupled to the application server, wherein the application server implements a web application, and wherein each client system implements a client application configured to provide a web-based user interface for accessing a network service provided by the application server via the web application.”

For additional information on this patent application, see: Ketchel, III, Paul J. Selectively Redeemable Telehealth Services. U.S. Patent Application Number 20230097995, filed November 10, 2022 and posted March 30, 2023. Patent URL (for desktop use only): https://ppubs.uspto.gov/pubwebapp/external.html?q=(20230097995)&db=US-PGPUB&type=ids

(Our reports deliver fact-based news of research and discoveries from around the world.)